I'm tired of combat being so routine and boring in 5e...

I'm tired of combat being so routine and boring in 5e. Of course the enjoyment derived from an encounter largely comes down to how well the encounter is designed and how well I as the player roleplay, I feel as the mechanics of 5e don't lend themselves to a strong narrative combat. I want a system that allows for targeting of body parts, realistic wounds (countered by healing and heroic constitution), weapon choice that actually matters besides min/maxing for damage, while generally being smooth and quick. Would Riddle of Steel fit my needs or there is a better combat system for high fantasy?

I've not played 5e, but I find the simplicity of combat in old school D&D to be a boon. Added more mechanical complexity actually tends to reduce your options. If you have disarming, tripping, feinting and so forth all use different mechanics, then one is probably going to be better for any given character to do. Assuming this doesn't get outshone by an ordinary attack, you can expect, for instance, to see a character trying to trip somebody over and over, which is just silly.

But if you don't have any firm mechanical differentiation and simply improvise based on a person's description of what he wants to do (and on the present circumstances), with no commitment to handle things the exact same way the next time a similar situation arises, then people are free to be cinematic and colorful. In old school D&D, +1 damage is worth about the same as +2 to hit, so it's easy enough to give somebody a -2 chance to hit in exchange for +1 damage if he's swinging wildly and savagely. And since "advantage" and "disadvantage" are worth about +/-4, the trade-off for that would be about +/-2 damage.

Runequest 6/Mythras sounds like it may be of interest to you.

>But if you don't have any firm mechanical differentiation and simply improvise based on a person's description of what he wants to do (and on the present circumstances), with no commitment to handle things the exact same way the next time a similar situation arises, then people are free to be cinematic and colorful

I find that the Storyteller system (WoD) lends itself to this. In theory, the way it should work, is you just say what you want to do, then roll the appropriate stats and skills. This is as far as it gets when it comes to just doing what you're describing mechanically, as far as I know.

5e follows the same assumptions in general (although grapling and pushing is statted out).

> In old school D&D, +1 damage is worth about the same as +2 to hit, so it's easy enough to give somebody a -2 chance to hit in exchange for +1 damage if he's swinging wildly and savagely.

I find this very unlikely to be in accordance with the AD&D math.

I prefer the approach where the "what happens" is more important than the "how it happens". 4e uses this approach (the same as 5e), but gets to actually have pretty fun combat, for example. Targeting limbs and body parts usually leads to mechanical complexity that I think just comes down to optimizing your attacks, and in the end is just as boring and straightforward as "I attack".

With all that said, I've found Savage World to be pretty tolerable, despite taking this approach.

>I find this very unlikely to be in accordance with the AD&D math.
Let's say you have a 50% chance to hit your target with your longsword, which does 4.5 damage on average.

With +2 to-hit: 60% x 4.5 = 2.7 damage
With +1 damage: 50% x 5.5 = 2.75 damage

Now, these numbers are going vary a bit according to a number of factors. The higher your damage output, the less important +1 damage is. Similarly, the higher your chance to hit, the less important a +2 chance to hit is.

So if you've usually got a 70% chance to hit and do base damage with your longsword, +1 damage is worth about +3 to hit. If your chance to hit is normally only 25%, +1 damage and +1 to hit are of about equal value.

But overall, for the characters who are most important in combat (i.e., not wizards using d4 damage weapons), +1 for +2 is about right.

>I feel as the mechanics of 5e don't lend themselves to a strong narrative combat.

It's funny because you go on to describe what most people would term "crunchy" combat.

It actually sickens me how vague and useless p&p nomenclature is.

GURPS is ur thing m8, it has rules even for different positions and ignoring some boring stuff won't actually break the game

>I want a system that allows for targeting of body parts, realistic wounds (countered by healing and heroic constitution), weapon choice that actually matters besides min/maxing for damage, while generally being smooth and quick.
question: how long until that gets boring too?

I feel you OP. I've DMed 5e for almost a year and in the end it had become a chore for how mind-numbingly boring combat is. Playerside, each character had no more than a couple of credible options, and too many of the monsters are little more than punching bags. In the end, I abandoned the game, and now I alternate between games with little combat and 4e, the only edition where fights are fun on their own.

>4e, the only edition where fights are fun on their own.
because combats are tactical? like a skirmish game?

D&D is decidedly a skirmish game mate, there's nothing wrong with that and 4e excels at having simple rules for combat that actually offer options that go beyond "attack," "magic," or "class feature for extra DPS."

Some people like that and it's okay to let them like it. Now if you want to break down why 4e combat is fun, one can definitely cite the wealth of options both the player and the gm has within a single encounter as a major factor of the fun. This allows both players and gm to create interesting and diverse encounters through use of hard coded abilities as opposed to just "narrating your to hit roll differently". At least, that's what I think anyways. As someone who has GM'ed 3.5, 4e and bits of 5, making fun combat for 4e was the easiest and outside of the first few sessions, none of my 4e combats became "I roll to hit. Oh, I miss. Next" encounters.

Now Op, you want crunchy combat for high fantasy? Try Legends of Wulin. You'll have to survive the godawful editing that is the book, but once you've done that and have grasped the dice system and how combat flows, you'll find that the combat system is pretty rules light/narrative driven while still offering a wealth of options to the player and gm alike.

We're a small community with very little in way of unity. It's not surprising that p&p nomenclature is not very defined.

Give GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy a look. GURPS's main flaws (front-loaded complexity/character creation and too many options that will inevitably be irrelevant for whatever campaign you decide on) are for the most part handled by series books like DF. The books in the Dungeon Fantasy series provide character templates akin to D&D classes, strip out the rules and abilities that aren't relevant to parties of three to six murderhobos killing monsters and taking their stuff, and give GMs advice on keeping things smooth and simple.

GURPS gives you hit locations, seriously lethal wounds (though beefier classes can still soak a respectable amount and healing magic exists), and differences in weapons that actually matter; Dungeon Fantasy focuses it to a quick and smooth combat experience.

Dungeon Fantasy is also getting a standalone product next spring/summer I think. It's still based on GURPS rules, but you only need those books, so it runs OSR-style dungeon crawls without the need to give into the Basic Set of GURPS.

Y'know what, fuck it, I'll post the two main PDFs of the DF line. Head on over to the GURPS general thread if you want more info, but a quick glance-through of these should tell you if DF is your cup of tea or not.

More dogs

The first PDF is basically the PHB, and this one is basically the DMG. There are plenty of fanmade bestiaries out there to act as your MM, but nothing official due to how easy it is to stat up your own creations (the DF Redbox will have an MM though).

Here's hoping you like what you see, or at least you find another system that works out for you.

GURPS gets a lot of flak for complexity, but I think honestly it mostly comes down to memetic leftovers from 3e Vehicles. It did actually make people do calculus to stat cars, so the whole system got a reputation that's not really true. It's a hugely expansive, but it's actually not mechanically complex. Almost everything in the game is resolved by rolling 3d6 and getting under a number on your sheet, plus or minus situational modifiers. And even those aren't usually that complicated to remember, and can easily be improvised by a GM.

Honestly compared to something like Shadowrun it's a mechanically simple system. The vast majority of the books are options.

i wasnt judging, dont worry, only inquiring

terminology isn't really at fault here. what OP wants is less abstraction. now hit locations and maneuvers can be both gamist or narrativist. so the ambiguity comes from the mechanics.

Oh, it's a knitted blanket.
The thumbnail on that is very worrying.

Thanks, I was waiting for this (you) all day

I'll take a look. Thanks.